FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT WORLD LEADERS - PAGE 3

UNITED NATIONS - The new Libya will join the international community as a nation committed to peace, security, and democracy, the head of the transitional government said Monday. World leaders pledged support for the nation emerging from over four decades of Moammar Gadhafi's rule. Transitional National Council chairman Mustafa Abdul-Jalil took the floor for the first time at the United Nations, speaking at a meeting attended by President Obama, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and other world leaders to assess the path forward after Gadhafi's ouster in a civil war. The General Assembly voted Friday to transfer Libya's seat from Gadhafi to the former rebel movement.

For Philadelphia's Catholic leaders, Pope Francis' announcement that he will visit the city was worthy of a Rocky dance - the one where the fictional boxer bounces on the balls of his feet, fists raised in the air, just after conquering the Art Museum steps. Fittingly, the organizers of the Catholic Church's World Meeting of Families chose the Art Museum's Grand Hall, just a few feet from the famous steps, to relay the news. It was the culmination of months of efforts to secure the pope's attendance, including a trip to Rome by Archbishop Charles Chaput, Mayor Nutter, and Gov. Corbett.

Prayers of mourning wailed from minarets yesterday as Jordanians put down their work and rushed crying into a rainstorm in a spontaneous show of grief when they heard that their beloved King Hussein was dead. Hussein, 63, the man who became American's most steadfast friend in the Arab world and a tireless missionary for peace, died at 11:43 a.m. at the King Hussein Medical Center here. The death came just two days after the barely conscious king was flown home from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

Lightning halts search for Okla. bridge victims Divers have recovered seven bodies from the underwater tangle of steel and concrete where a barge collapsed a section of a bridge, but they halted the search yesterday when lightning made it too dangerous. Oklahoma authorities said several vehicles remained underwater from Sunday's collapse of the Interstate 40 bridge over the murky, swiftly flowing Arkansas River. Searchers today were to bring in cranes to lift chunks of the bridge and vehicles from the water.

Talk of violence and hunger buzzed unpleasantly around the quiet, lush seminary campus like insects intruding on the drowsiness of the summer's academic lull. But it was the dreary realities of children's lives in less scenic places - on the streets of Rio de Janeiro and the battlefields of El Salvador - that drew more than 150 religious leaders from 28 nations and more than a dozen faiths to Princeton Theological Seminary last week for a three-day conference on the status of children.

Australia's Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd took advice yesterday on how to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on cutting greenhouse-gas emissions and fielded phone calls from world leaders - starting in on work the day after a sweeping election victory. The emphatic triumph of Rudd's Labor Party swings Australia toward the political left after almost 12 years of conservative rule. The voted puts Australia at odds with Washington on two crucial policy issues: Iraq and global warming.

What a great Columbus Day weekend it will be. Just as the navigator and Queen Isabella used an unorthodox method in their negotiations that culminated in the discovery of the North American continent, we have President Reagan and the Soviet leader in an unorthodox mini-summit scheduled for Columbus Day weekend in Iceland. We should all applaud their new approach as a grand prelude to the fast- approaching 500th anniversary of the discovery of America, six years away, in 1992. What a year that will be if these two world leaders succeed in creating a masterpiece of peace for the world in the '90s and beyond.

A friend writes: "I have noticed this so many times before, and now again. "Great public problems - that threaten our way of life, even - just seem to dissolve into nothing as soon as we turn our backs. "Remember when the Soviet Union was about to break up into separate states - Lithuania and all those? It was an important deal, in all the papers. World leaders were in a sweat about it. "Anybody hear anything on that lately? Is the Soviet Union still together, or what?

Stanley Crouch is a columnist for the New York Daily News When gangsters such as Saddam Hussein are captured, the question of justice is raised as high as it can ever be. I began thinking about this when Pol Pot was arrested in Cambodia. Looking at that little man, I began to wonder what should be done with someone who had ordered the murder of millions. Next to the immeasurable pain and grief such butchers bring into the world, the ancient rule of an eye for an eye seems inadequate.

The National Science Foundation said Thursday that it was awarding the Franklin Institute more than $5 million to educate Philadelphians and other urban residents about climate change. The institute will share the money with partners in New York, Pittsburgh, and Washington. "Education and research provide the key to American innovation and to securing our future as world leaders," said U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.) in announcing the grant. "That includes leadership to combat human-created climate change while we still have time to act. " The educational outreach will include K-12 classrooms as well as programs aimed at adult residents in neighborhoods around Philadelphia, said Steve Snyder, the institute's vice president for exhibits and program development.